Toby Young

Nice try, Nicky. Despite official efforts to bury the bad news of the government’s major volte face on forced academisation under rolling election coverage, Morgan’s climbdown late last week has been widely publicised and celebrated by what had turned into a formidable array of opponents stretching right across the political spectrum.
In the end, Morgan dared not defy a handful of powerful Tory backbenchers or shire leaders – according to one, the government had simply ‘gone bonkers’ –

Below, my contribution to a recent discussion in Prospect, reflecting on the publication of a recent report by the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission.
The big question: Social mobility
Is Britain still too elitist?
A new report states that people educated at Oxbridge have created a “closed shop at the top”
Each week, Prospect asks a range of experts, as well as our readers, to come up with answers to the questions defining the political agenda.

Below, my piece in today’s Guardian Comment page on the sudden demotion of Michael Gove.
One could hear the gasps echoing around the political world yesterday morning. Gove demoted to the whips’ office? Unthinkable.
Or was it? For experienced Gove watchers, there were a few signs in the air. At last month’s Wellington College festival of education, I sat with more than 1,000 people in a marquee waiting for the secretary of state. This was the minister’s natural habitus,

Over the last eight months, I have been taking the arguments in my book School Wars around the country, talking to parents, teachers, heads in maintained schools: local authority leaders; private, grammar, academy and faith school heads and staff; and many students. I have learned an enormous amount from these discussions about the strengths and divides of our current system and the impact that Coalition policy is having on our schools.
Last week the New Statesman published my edited diary style account of some of these discussions.

Open Democracy has launched an interesting new series on social exclusion, and how to further economic inclusion. I kick the series off with an article on the relationship between economic and educational inequality – and how a different school system might promote great parity between students.